Developmentally Challenged

Winner of the 2007 Palme d’Or, this miserable piece of shit managed to capture the hearts of the Cannes Film Circle-Jerk.

This two-hour boondoggle is like listening to The Vagina Monologues, while watching The Bicycle Thief, only that analogy is a gross misrepresentation of both substance and entertainment, neither of which you will find in 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days.

The dialog was crap. Maybe something was lost in translation, like why I should give a flying fuck about either of these characters. Maybe the point was that weak-willed people who see themselves as helpless victims of their circumstances, and don’t ever think-through their actions are people to make movies about.

According to the Wikipedia page:

After thinking about the story for a month, Mungiu put down the synopsis in 10 minutes then wrote the screenplay in another month. He revised the screenplay numerous times during productions, rewriting and taking out parts that didn’t seem necessary (some changes were also suggested by discussions with Răzvan Rădulescu, who co-wrote Cristi Puiu’s previous two features).

And you know what, it’s pretty fucking clear that nobody spent any considerable amount of time writing this thing. Below is the short, off-the-top-of-my-head list of shit that was important enough to spend a significant amount of time building up, only to completely ignore:

• The dorm, the dorm-mates, the exams everyone was talking about
• The father of the girl getting the abortion coming to visit the day of the abortion
• The flowers, which occupied a good 5 minutes of dialog about how important they were, how many (48, not 49 or 47) and what kind they were
• The hotel they ended up at. The only thing I could figure out was that the Hotels Mr. Bebe suggested didn’t require him to leave his ID at the door.
• Mr. Bebe fucking forgetting his ID card at the door after giving the girls a good 10 minute lecture
• Why it was even important that the girl went to her boyfriends’ mothers’ birthday party
• Why it was important that said mother made said girl marzipan
• Why the mother would even make marzipan for someone of a lower ‘class’, since a good lot of the discussion at the dinner table was the girl getting insulted by the upper-class families.
• Why the same girl was such a psycho-bitch to her boyfriend
• Why, after making such a big deal about the flowers, and how his mom would know that there were 49 instead of 48 etc, the mom, dad, or other families didn’t make mention of said flowers at all
• Why abortion-girl wouldn’t use or answer the phone
• Why it was important to ditch the fetus via 10th-story garbage chute instead of throwing it in a dumpster.
• Why money seemed like such an issue, yet there was no supporting information about how hard it was to get. Exactly the opposite. “Hey, buy 48 flowers for my mom, no problem right?” “Hey talk to all of these black-market guys and buy shit from them.” “Hey, sure, we can get twice the money we have right now in a few days.”

I could actually keep going, but I’m kind of sick of remembering the movie. If you want to see a good movie that is something sort of like this movie, go see Juno. 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days was not, as Wikipedia says:

indicative of a broader renaissance in Romanian cinema

and really, if it is, please let me know when Romania gets out of their Renaissance, and into…I don’t know at least the later half of their metaphorical 18th century of cinema. I’ve seen better shit come out of angst-riddled, 2nd year film-students who walk around wearing black eyeliner.

Seriously, Romania, go fucking film some plastic bags blowing in the wind, or something.